It is a requirement of the United States Urban Mass Transit Administration of the Department of Transportation that all transit vehicles have windows which can be released by a passenger from within the vehicle. In the past various mechanisms have been designed for releasing the windows of a transit type vehicle, for example, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,004,756. The disclosure of said patent provides for the opening of bottom hinged windows by means of plunger-type mechanisms which are actuated from the driver's compartment, but the structure and inventive concept of this disclosure is in no way suggestive of the present invention. Other mechanisms have been provided for releasably latching the doors of an ordinary passenger automobile, but such prior mechanisms are somewhat complicated and expensive to manufacture and are not readily adapted for use on transit vehicles having windows hingedly suspended from their upper ends as in the present invention.